Seminars
September 2026
CMSP News and Views Seminar Series: Exploring alternatives to digital artificial neural networks
Florian Marquardt· Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light and Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
Thu, Sep 24 · 09:00 UTC
Florian Marquardt surveys approaches to reducing the energy and computational cost of neural networks by implementing their functions in physical devices. The central question is how experiments can efficiently determine updates to adjustable parameters, allowing the hardware itself to learn. Examples include learning through time reversal, obtaining nonlinear computation from linear optical scattering, and training analog quantum simulators as neuromorphic systems. The seminar is available in person and through the registration link on the organizer’s event page.
Toward Reliable AI-Assisted Mathematics
Qihao Ye· Columbia University
Wed, Sep 23 · 14:00 UTC · Online
Qihao Ye examines practical, affordable ways for individual mathematicians to use AI in literature searches, proof development and verification. The talk identifies seven recurring failure modes and introduces the open-source QED multi-agent system designed to address them. A case study on constructing Carleman weights for wave equations on the half-line shows how automated search can be combined with a researcher’s mathematical insight and rigorous checking. The organizer links both the implementation and the accompanying research paper. Online via Rutgers DIMACS Zoom. Wednesday 23 September 2026, 10:00–11:00 EDT (America/New_York; UTC−4). Use the Zoom link and passcode on the official event page. Organized by the DIMACS AI and Mathematics Seminar. This listing advertises the verified remote attendance option.
Invertebrate oncology: ancient origins of tumor-host interactions
David Bilder· University of California, Berkeley
Tue, Sep 22 · 20:00 UTC · MIT, United States
MIT Biology Colloquium Series talk by David Bilder (University of California, Berkeley), hosted by Yukiko Yamashita, on invertebrate oncology and the ancient evolutionary origins of tumor-host interactions.
AI for the Sciences: towards understanding
Klaus Robert Müller· TU Berlin & Korea University, Seoul
Tue, Sep 22 · 16:00 UTC · Vienna, Austria
ISTA Lecture by Klaus Robert Müller (TU Berlin & Korea University, Seoul) on how machine learning and AI enable scientific research, particularly in medicine and chemistry, and on explainability techniques for extracting understanding from machine learning models.
Lessons from the Dead
Z Yan Wang· Columbia University Zuckerman Institute
Tue, Sep 22 · 14:30 UTC · New York, United States
Z Yan Wang presents comparative neuroscience research on the brains and behaviors of octopuses and bumblebees to illuminate life-history processes. The talk is part of Columbia's Tuesdays@10 neuroscience seminar program for researchers across fields and career stages.
Early Sleep Biomarkers of Alzheimer's Disease Pathophysiology and Memory Impairment
Bryce Mander· UC Irvine School of Medicine
Fri, Sep 18 · 19:00 UTC · Stanford, United States
Bryce Mander presents research on early sleep biomarkers associated with Alzheimer's disease pathophysiology and memory impairment. The William C. Dement Seminar connects sleep and circadian neuroscience with neurodegeneration, cognition and clinically relevant approaches to detecting disease-related change.
The Connectome in Use: From anatomical wiring to functional organization in the behaving C. elegans brain
Rani Borbara· Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, MIT
Fri, Sep 18 · 16:00 UTC · Cambridge, United States
Rani Borbara presents brain-wide recordings from more than 150 freely moving C. elegans to examine how anatomical connectivity becomes functional organization during behavior. Cross-animal models map cell-class conditional dependencies and test how synapses, gap junctions, neuromodulation and shared brain states shape circuit dynamics.
Gravitational waveform modeling with physics informed neural networks and surrogates
Nils Deppe· Cornell University
Thu, Sep 17 · 15:00 UTC · Princeton, United States
This seminar discusses a proof-of-concept gravitational-waveform model described in arXiv:2511.10522. It augments post-Newtonian equations using physics-informed neural-network methods and universal differential equations. The talk also covers ongoing development of a precessing surrogate model designed to evaluate in less than one millisecond while covering a broader portion of the LVK frequency band.
Finding Meaning in Memories
Daphna Shohamy, Ashok Litwin-Kumar· Columbia University
Wed, Sep 16 · 22:30 UTC · Jerome L. Greene Science Center, United States
Daphna Shohamy and Ashok Litwin-Kumar bridge experimental and computational neuroscience to explain how the brain assigns significance to memories, how dopamine shapes memory-guided decisions, and how bodily signals influence learning. Isabel Low moderates a public discussion and question session.
The Genome Remembers: Beyond the Genetic Code
Shiv Grewal· Laboratory of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, NCI/CCR
Wed, Sep 16 · 18:00 UTC · Lipsett Amphitheater, NIH Bethesda campus
Shiv Grewal discusses how chromatin and epigenetic mechanisms establish, maintain, and transmit genome states beyond the DNA sequence itself. This NIH Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series event is offered in person and through NIH VideoCast.
Kirk Public Lecture | An operator-algebraic perspective on topological orders
Yoshiko Ogata· Kyoto University
Wed, Sep 16 · 15:00 UTC · Cambridge, Cambridge
Kirk Public Lecture at the Isaac Newton Institute by Yoshiko Ogata (Kyoto University) on how macroscopic properties of matter emerge from quantum particle interactions and the classification of topological order from an operator-algebraic perspective in mathematical physics.
Applied MathematicsMathematical ModelingSeries: Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, University of Cambridge
SQI Seminar Series: Tal Linzen, NYU
Tal Linzen· New York University; Google
Tue, Sep 15 · 20:00 UTC · Cambridge, United States
Tal Linzen, an associate professor of linguistics and data science at New York University and a research scientist at Google, will speak in MIT's Siegel Family Quest for Intelligence seminar series. His work combines behavioral experiments and computational methods to study language learning and comprehension, alongside large-language-model post-training, evaluation, and interpretability.
CMSP News and Views Seminar Series: Quantum chemistry methods to study strongly correlated systems – from variational to machine learning approaches and its application to multiexcitonic phenomena
Debashree Ghosh· School of Chemical Sciences, Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science
Mon, Sep 14 · 09:00 UTC
Debashree Ghosh discusses quantum-chemistry approaches for strongly correlated polyaromatic hydrocarbons, including acenes and carotenoids. The talk examines why large valence active spaces are needed to describe optical properties and singlet–triplet gaps, and how density-matrix renormalization-group methods address these systems. Changes in molecular topology and odd-membered rings are connected to spin frustration and optical behaviour. The seminar also covers neural-network configuration interaction, connections between artificial neural networks and matrix-product-state wavefunctions, and restricted-Boltzmann-machine approaches to quantum wavefunctions. Applications include singlet fission and multiexcitonic phenomena. The hybrid event takes place in ICTP’s Euler Lecture Hall and online; the official event page provides the registration link.
Canonical Quantization of Singular Configuration Spaces: Symmetry Reduction, Mass Gap Bounds, and Non-smooth Calculus
Luca Mrini· University of Vienna
Thu, Sep 10 · 18:30 UTC · Waterloo, Canada
Luca Mrini presents work in progress on quantising singular configuration spaces using the non-smooth calculus of metric-measure spaces. The framework generalises smooth quantum mechanics through Hilbert spaces, position and momentum operators, Hamiltonians, unitary dynamics, and observable algebras. A method for bounding mass gaps after symplectic reduction uses the curvature of the unreduced configuration space. Examples include the harmonic oscillator constrained to zero angular momentum, lattice Yang–Mills theory, and fractional-dimensional Laakso spaces. The talk closes with prospective applications to the Yang–Mills mass-gap problem and quantum gravity.
Recent advances in organoid production and drug discovery
Hideya Sakaguchi, Thomas Mitchell· National Center for Child Health and Development
Thu, Sep 10 · 07:00 UTC · Online
This English-language webinar examines advances in organoid research, production, and drug discovery. Hideya Sakaguchi covers the developmental-biology origins of neural organoid research and its potential for drug discovery, followed by a keynote from Thomas Mitchell of The Organoid Company and a live question session.
Changing Perspectives on Self Control
Yuko Munakata· University of California, Davis
Wed, Sep 9 · 20:00 UTC · Cambridge, United States
Yuko Munakata presents evidence challenging capacity-only accounts of self-control and explains how experience, effort, and expected payoff shape executive-function engagement and later outcomes.
Learning and memory in the infant brain
Nick Turk-Browne· Yale University
Tue, Sep 8 · 14:30 UTC · New York, United States
Nick Turk-Browne presents research using infant functional MRI to investigate how the hippocampus supports learning and memory early in life. The seminar connects neural development, memory formation and infantile amnesia through new methods for studying awake infants.
Preparation of Tensor Network States
Ignacio Cirac· Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik
Mon, Sep 7 · 09:00 UTC · Cambridge, Cambridge
Isaac Newton Institute seminar in the 'Mathematics of many-body entanglement' (MMB) programme: Ignacio Cirac of the Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik speaks on the preparation of tensor network states.
Applied MathematicsMathematical ModelingSeries: Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, University of Cambridge
AI agents for therapeutic reasoning across biological contexts
Michelle M. Li· Carnegie Mellon University
Recorded
Michelle M. Li examines how computational analyses can preserve the biological context of a proposed treatment, including cell type, disease state, genetic background and patient characteristics. She introduces Medea, an AI system that combines biological software, predictive models and literature retrieval while checking intermediate steps and reconciling evidence. The seminar presents evaluations involving cell-specific target selection, cancer-cell synthetic lethality and immunotherapy response. A separate yeast experiment tests predictions against previously unpublished measurements of gene-pair interactions under DNA-damaging treatments. The research addresses whether an agent can transfer useful evidence between contexts while recognizing when that transfer is unsupported. Reported comparisons cover predictive performance, computational failures and the ability to abstain. This recording retains the original seminar date.
Video · 50 minComputational BiologySystems BiologySeries: Microsoft Research New England Generative Modeling & Sampling Seminar
August 2026
Somatic cell deformability drives reproductive evolution
Suhrid Ghosh· European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL)
Thu, Aug 27 · 11:00 UTC · EMBL Heidelberg
Suhrid Ghosh will present work on how cell mechanics and cytoskeletal dynamics shape the evolution of reproductive structures in Drosophila ovaries. Cross-species morphology, ex-vivo live imaging, perturbations of cortical tension, and newly isolated terminal-filament cells reveal how somatic-cell deformability can alter ovariole architecture and reproductive fitness.
Evolutionary Developmental BiologyReproductive BiologySeries: European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL)